Austrian Airlines: Traffic Results for the Entire Year 2017: Record Year with 12.8% Growth in Passenger Volume

10 January 2018

· All-time high: About 12.9 million passengers flew with Austrian Airlines
· Passenger load factor up 0.7 percentage points to 76.8 percent
· Total of 143,999 flights (one-way) in the record year 2017

Austrian Airlines carried approx. 12.9 million passengers in the period January to December 2017. This comprises a year-on-year increase of 12.8 percent or 1.5 million passengers. This rise can be primarily attributed to the airline’s expanded flight offering in Europe. The flight offering measured in available seat kilometers (ASK) was up 6.6 percent to more than 26 billion. Revenue passenger kilometers (RPK) climbed 7.6 percent from the prior-year level to surpass the level of 20 billion. Capacity utilization of the flights (passenger load factor) equaled 76.8 percent on average in 2017, an increase of 0.7 percentage points compared to 2016. On balance, Austria’s national carrier operated 143,999 flights in 2017, corresponding to an average of about 395 flights per day.

“2017 was a record year for us. We achieved an all-time high with our passenger volume, which is unprecedented in the history of Austrian Airlines”, explains Austrian Airlines CCO Andreas Otto. “We will even further improve upon this passenger record in 2018 thanks to the additional Boeing 777 and the two new long-haul destinations Tokyo and Cape Town”, he adds.

In the month of December 2017 Austrian Airlines carried more than 900,000 passengers. This comprises a rise of 11.7 percent from the previous year. The flight offering measured in available seat kilometers climbed 3.0 percent to more than 1.8 billion. Revenue passenger kilometers were up 5.8 percent to more than 1.3 billion. Capacity utilization (passenger load factor) equaled an average of 73.7 percent, representing an increase of 2.0 percentage points from December 2016.